Why I bought a 60D over the 7D

Recently I bought a brand new Canon 60D ( + 17-135mm lens and a 50mm f1.8 prime). Before you ask, I couldn’t afford the 5D mark II. The 7D was affordable but it wasn’t the cost difference that influenced by purchase. Firstly, the 60D and 7D are almost identical, both have APS-C 18 mega pixel sensors although the 7D can shoot stills at 8fps and the 60D at a little over 5fps. As far as I’m concerned it’s far from 25fps so I don’t really care. The 7D is more rugged, so if I was dragging myself through the humid swamps of Zimbabwe I may have bought the 7d, but I’m not. The 60D is a bit lighter and has a fancy swivel screen making in much easier to shoot in difficult locations, (one of the most compelling reason to shoot on an SLR) the screen can completely rotate protecting it from scratches too, cool. The 7D has auto gain only for the audio and no manual control for levels, the 60D has both auto and manual gain control. The 7D has more auto focusing points, can’t see why I need 19 over the 9 on the 60D, seems over the top to me. The 7D has a shutter response time of 131 ms vs 253 ms on the 60D, which a 122ms difference, this could make a difference for some I suppose. The 60D uses SD cards which means I can use the very cool eye-fi card, the 7D uses compact flash (I’ll post something about the eye-fi card soon). As you can see there’s pros and cons for both, and when you look at these you may still think the the 7D is the best option, I certainly did, but here’s the kicker. There’s a little firmware hack for most canon SLRs called Magic Lantern than unlocks a plethora of features, it doesn’t work on the 7D. I may write something about Magic Lantern at a later date but for now I’ll just say, it rocks! Go and have a read over on the site, esp if you own a canon DSLR. Overall, I’m loving the 60D, although my hard drive would tell you that 18mega pixel raw images are overkill, it may be right. Pics coming soon.